You know, if I had millions lying around I’d want to build or buy a small <10km line in rural buttfuck Saskatchewan and ride train cars around, just for myself and letting people that made it here use it for fun. I haven’t tried estimating how much that would cost.
Have a look at the West Coast Express, opened in 1995 from Vancouver BC to 43 miles out at an estimated cost of 40 to 80 million Canadian dollars, equivalent to 53.4 to 106.8 million of today’s USD. There were musings of it as far back as 1971, but it sounds like design started sometime after 1981 and construction started in 1994, finishing late 1995.
The price tag would include 5 engines and 5 sets of bilevel railcars, leasing tracks for CP and BNSF, building a handful of turnouts and sidings to hold the trains when out of service, build or contracting wash and maintenance facilities, maybe some small track and signalling upgrades along the route, and station facilities in 7 places.
Another example is the Rail Runner Express in New Mexico that runs 96.5 miles from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. The NM Governor Richardson announced it in August 2003. Construction began in October 2005. The first portion of service began in July 2006 and the full line went into service by December 2008. The cost to build the line was about 285 million USD total equivalent to about 438 million USD today. A operational deficit of 10 to 20 million USD annually was reported and criticized, but roads and bridges of that length cost as much to maintain anyway.
This hugely depends on many factors. What quality should the rail be? Do you transport freight at 30km/h or pasenger rail at 200 km/h? Is there electification involved? How is the soil along the tracks? How many trains of what type do you need? Do you want electric train protection and signaling? How nice do you want the train stops to be? Does it cross property of private individuals that you need to aquire?
I just want to say that this is not really a question that has an answer since it depends on so many factors. You also have to think about regulations for rail traffic. Building a rail line in your backyard isn‘t neary as expensive as one you use commercially because of safety standards you have to comply with, which is a good thing.
Oh and even if you could specify a project, i still would have no clue since i‘m not a project manager nor civil engineer, just interested in rail and trains :D
Is there transit on both ends as one of the challenges with rail in NA is once you arrive at your destination, it can be hard to make that last mile or so transit. It also has to be as fast or faster overall than driving and it has to be cheaper as people will just default to cars again. That has been my experience living in cities around the world.
You might find this video about the brightline rail in Florida interesting. They started off as only a short section and the video discusses the costs and funding.
900k. Lol, that’s cute. I just read an article that said the DoD is planning on spending 1.7T (T as in trillion) on unreliable F35 fighter planes. Priorities, ey?
Ancora’s plan, though some of it sounded nice on the surface, includes more “Precision Scheduled Railroading”, reducing headcount, and this is how Regan put it:
“Once Ancora has extracted value from the company, it will move on and leave shareholders, employees, customers, and the government to pick up the pieces.”
Yup, that’s how hedge funds work. Everyone and everything will be left even worse off, which is hard to even imagine given the current state of affairs.
I think this is critical infrastructure that we should nationalize via eminent domain. Given that it’s wildly profitable, what arguments can fiscal conservatives make against it? We can then make the capital investments and worker conditions changes to bring about the direly needed safety improvements. Nationalizing the rail lines could bring the costs down and safety & reliability up further still.
Big congratulations to them! It’s a very impressive accomplishment for a sprawling network with a long legacy.
(Edited to add): The US could honestly do big things like this too if they actually valued their railroad network as a matter of national security like they did with highways.
I was in Europe on their rail and we rode from Switzerland to Rome in a day. Albeit a bit long, 8 hours, but when we got off we realized that entire trip was the same distance as Denver to Seattle, a flight we frequently take.
Flying takes us about 3.5 hours plus security, waiting, travel to and from the airport. Plus then sitting on a cramped plane with very little service.
I wish I could take 2 more hours and have an enjoyable ride like the rail they have over there.
I was figuring 8 hours to be a bit long and i just checked: all connections from zurich to rome go via the gotthard scenic route, and not through the tunnel. I thought the gotthard was open again for passenger rail after the big derailment they had, apparently not. While the scenic route is very nice indeed, the tunnel could shave off a solid hour of travel time.
same as the interstate highway. federally owned alignments, rails, signals, etc enable private operators to offer transport services based out of private yards
Nationalize all of it, or let the unions purchase the companies.
When Conrail was up for sale, initially the only viable bid came from the employees’ union of Conrail. Liddy Dole rejected it out of hand for that reason. Years later it was sold to a group of proper capitalists.
Separate infrastructure and operations. Nationalize the infrastructure, allow private companies to pay to operate over it, but place limits on things like train length and require regular inspection of the rolling stock using the national infrastructure. Basically, adopt an infrastructure & regulation system similar to that trucks operate under.
Perfect! Just like the interstate highway system, one of the smartest and most successful initiatives in American history. And like the interstates, this is a solid investment of our tax dollars.
Let the private operators fight over pricing, both for commercial and private use. That’s a win for everyone, and the environment.
If I could hop a train to New Orleans and just chill for a few hours, I sure as hell wouldn’t drive. People like me could move around, stimulating economies far from home. That in turn would drive cities to invest in infrastructure, give people a reason to visit.
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